Gawker: we hate your children

Surprisingly, 'Bring A Fit Jew' Rugby Party Offensive To Some

Richard — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 17:28:00 EST

Antisemitism in Europe has been on a curious and troubling upswing for the past few years, mostly in central Europe, but now it's moving its way west. Some charming under-21 rugby players at Oxford (that's in England) decided to throw a party with a "bring a fit Jew" theme. The young men put on fake payot and carried around bags of money for the fun, splashy event. The University found out and tried to block it, but the kids sneaked their way around it and had the party anyway. The captain of the team, a lad named Phil Boon, has commented on behalf of the students:

The captain of the under-21 team, Phil Boon, said he "didn't see what the problem was". He said Jewish girls had accepted invites to the party. "I can understand why it might have offended some people, but it would have been an awesome social." Boon refused to comment further.

[Guardian]

Hipster Daddy Throwdown A Vortex Of Do Not Want

Ryan Tate — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 21:51:50 EDT

Alternadad and struggling writer Neal Pollack (pictured, right) has, of course, his own "alternative online parenting publication" called Offsprung, and the site in turn has a chat section called "the Playground," and Pollack figures no one else should be allowed to ever use the word "playground" in the name of a parental discussion board. But that's exactly what Nerve.com founder Rufus Griscom (pictured, left) has gone and done, with his "Babble Playground," attached to his existing hipster parenting site Babble. And so the hipster parent flamewar is on. Cue the requisite nauseating, passive-aggressive bickering over which site is authentic and which site is derivative and tacky. To make things more fun, lawyers are involved.

Roughly a year ago, Pollack started his "Playground" discussion forum. In the last couple of weeks, Griscom's Babble started a similar forum called "Babble Playground."

"We felt usurped, if not completely ripped of," Pollack wrote. Some of his commenters went and started a thread on the competing discussion forum about how their own Playground was totally better. Mature, right? Griscom deleted the thread, which he called "inaccurate and kinda tacky."

Then Griscom sent an email saying, basically, What, you exist? I'm sorry, I hadn't noticed your little chat board. ("We had no idea that you had social networking functionality on your site... I haven’t been there in some time.")

Then Pollack asked his legal counsel if Griscom could somehow be sued and made to starve in the street for daring to copy his brilliant "Playground" naming scheme, and they said Uh, definitely not.

So Pollack exercised the only attack vector left at his disposal, calling Griscom a yuppie and a square:

Babble is an expensive downtown urban loft rehab, where everything looks pretty, but it all feels so perfect, so smooth, so sterile, so target-marketed, so…fake. Offsprung, on the other hand, is like going over to the house of a good friend, a friend who has three kids and can’t afford to even dream about a nanny. The house is imperfect. It’s loud. There’s a weird yellow stain with hair clumps behind the toilet. But it’s home, and it’s comfortable, and it’s yours.

Then all the hipsters went back to ruining their children and the world forever, The End.

[Offsprung via NYM]

Frank Gehry Designs Playground

Joshua Stein — Thu, 07 Jun 2007 15:17:04 EDT

What goes together better than titanium panels and razor-sharp edges than hundreds of small young dumb human beings engaging in running, skipping, falling and playing? Nothing! Or so thinks Mayor Bloomberg and the Battery Conservancy, who announced that Frank Gehry, the world's trickiest one trick pony, will be bestowing his whimsical architectural derring-do on a one-acre playground in Battery Park. Seriously, I used to babysit in TriBeCa and those kids will injure themselves on like, grass. They're rich but lack motor skills. But hey, it's TriBeCa, the land where parents barely even notice as their kids skid across their loft's whitewashed hardwood floors and slam into the Mies Van Der Rohe daybed with a impish sickening thud before returning to peruse the latest issue of Architectural Digest.

Gehry To Design Playground [AMNY]

Trend Alert: 2 Year Old Aleksey Vayners!

Emily Gould — Wed, 07 Mar 2007 10:50:31 EST

If we've read one 'rich Manhattanites will do anything to get their kids into preschool' article, we've read a hundred. The one in today's Sun is different, though, for two reasons: 1) It's not in New York magazine and 2) it mentions a new weapon in these toddling overachievers' arsenals: r sum s. Also, video r sum s. One preschool director even received a "media kit." But don't worry—she found it "distasteful." Some parents are undaunted, though, and defend their choice to pimp their children however they think best: "'There's such a supply-and-demand imbalance,' the Greenwich Village resident, who asked not to be identified, said. 'It seems like the chances of getting into an Ivy League school or graduate program are better. You can't imagine the stress it creates for parents.'" The stress it creates for people who are just trying to cling to their last shred of hope for humanity was not mentioned.

Preschool Directors Balk at Toddler R sum s [NYS]